What creed or clan shall win Columbia's crown?
Though freedom weep, by anarchy opprest,
Hesperia's face reflect Europa's frown,
Sceptered religion ne'er shall tread men down.
Belief and unbelief here find one plane,
That freedom's greater cause[31] be not o'erthrown, 1580
But spring and spread till every tongue maintain
The kingdom of the King whose throne all worlds sustain.
Here dawns that universal liberty--
Theme of the prophet tongue, the poet pen--
When, winged with power and crowned with purity,
Earth shall be heaven, and gods shall dwell with men;
Fraternity divine, that e'er hath been,
And e'er shall be, the blissful lot of those
Who, conquering self, bind Satan, fetter sin,
And soar beyond the reach of mortal woes, 1590
Rising to sainted heights, as all past Zions rose[32].
Till then no king upon this crownless land,
Reserved to freedom and to righteousness.
'Gainst her none prosper, lifting hostile hand.
Blest haven, fortressed by God's mightiness[33]!
Kingcraft and priestcraft plant their sure distress.
The past hath spoken--heed the warning tone:
Of pride beware, and baser sordidness--
Self's groveling tyranny, with heart of stone,
Whereby, in ages gone, this land did grieve and groan. 1600
"Give us a king[34]!" their cry, when power had come,
When wealth was massed, and men were multiplied;
"A king! A king!"--vibrant the echoing dome
From northern lake to gulf and ocean tide;
For Satan in their hearts had planted pride.
Grieved was the nation's wise and watchful sire;
Grieved was the faithful kinsman at his side;
From eyes of both shot gleams of righteous ire,
As voiced ambitious will its ominous desire.
They sighed: "This leadeth to captivity-- 1610
Perchance destruction, ending dark and dire.
Yet must we yield to human liberty
Its own, e'en though a brand from freedom's fire
Kindle for freedom's self the fatal pyre."
So saying, they anointed one their king
Who craved the crown, by patriot son and sire
Put by in pure denial, lest it bring
First care, then crime, and waken woes then slumbering.
For though a king see duty's pathway plain,
And walk therein, as he who now arose; 1620
What monarch from misrule can all refrain,
When privilege lifts power o'er friends and foes?
Bare is the reign untarnished to the close,
And rarer still the blameless dynasty.
Ofttimes as princes the unkingliest pose,
Because, forsooth, they come of some tall tree,
Whose root and trunk were sound, while branches blasted be.
True kingliness--what else proves man a king?
A slave, though throned and sceptered, bides a slave;
Nor pride, nor pelf, nor all that power may bring, 1630
Can make the serf a sovereign, or yet save
The dust of either from the common grave.
Royal the soul must be, or comes to end
All royalty. Spirit, then blood, God gave;
And each at last its separate way doth wend
Home to the parent source, to meet no more, nor blend.
Scarce gone the goodly ruler when his realm
Saw fierce rebellion rear its horrent head.
Usurping treason seized the civic helm,
Wrong trampled right, and justice, judgment, fled. 1640
Ages looked on while battling kingdoms bled.
Lifted the warning voice--its pleading vain:
A blood-drowned continent, a sea of dead,
And, of a mighty people, fallen, self-slain,
A prophet and a king, a solitary twain[35].
That prophet saw the coming of the Lord
Unto the Old, the New, Jerusalem;
Saw Israel returning at His word
From wheresoe'er His will had scattered them;
The realm's wide ruin saw, and strove to stem. 1650
That king, sole scion of a perished race,
Casting his blood-stained sword and diadem,
Lived but to see another nation[36] place
Firm foot upon the soil, then vanished from its face.
---
Wondrous, indeed, that ancient word and wise;
But wiser and more wondrous still the tale--
The after tale[37] of silent centuries,
Tongued by the guardian of the tome of gold:
Again, athwart the wilderness of waves
Surging old East and older West between, 1660
Where the lone sea a flowery southland laves,
And Zarahemla reigns as ocean queen,
Braving the swell, a storm-tossed bark is seen.
From doomed Jerusalem, to Jacob dear,
Albeit a leper[38], groping, blind, unclean,
Goes forth Manasseh's prophet pioneer[39],
Predestined to unveil the hidden hemisphere.
His lot to reap and plant on this rare shore
The promise of his fathers: Joseph's bough[40],
From Jacob's well, the billowy wall runs o'er; 1670
Abides in strength the archer-stricken bow,
Unto the utmost bound prevailing now,
Of Hesper's heaven-upholding hills. Bend, sheaves
Of Israel, as branches bend with snow,
Unto his sheaf grown mightiest! Here, as leaves
For multitude, the son the great sire's glory weaves.
Ere chimes for him the earth-departing hour,
Summoning a weary soul to restful toil
In risen worlds, where life puts on all power,
Lehi his house convenes,--their hearts the while 1680
Aglow beneath the burning words that pile
A pyramid of prophecy whose spire
Empierces heaven,--and lest they soil
The prospect pure, and tempt Jehovah's ire,
Warns them 'gainst ways of pride and paths of dark desire.
He speaks of Joseph's, Judah's, destiny;
Of blighting and of blessings yet to pour;
Proclaims deliverance his own shall see,
When cometh one the wandering to restore;
Forenames a chosen seer[41] (revealed of yore, 1690
When the boy dreamer's star o'er Egypt rose),
Bringing from dust a blest land's buried lore[42].
Seals then his benison, and eyelids close
To wake on worlds divine, whither, past all, he goes.
The favored son[43] of that prophetic sire--
Favored because most faithful and most just--
Hath soared to sacred mysteries still higher,
And tongued to envious ears the heavenly trust.
And serpent self, that demon of the dust,
Hath coiled and clung around rebellious souls, 1700
Ne'er friendly though fraternal, whose distrust
And jealousy breed bitterness that rolls
Rivers of wormwood 'twixt two races and their goals.
Now peoples twain the Promised Land divide:
Northland and Southland see their tribes increase,
From Arctic floe to far Antarctic tide;
From where the Eastern waves their thunders cease,
To where the Western waters are at peace.
White and delightsome, they that worship God;
They that deny Him, dark, degenerate, these, 1710
Doomed the stern wild to penetrate and plod--
Transgression's scourge and school, the Chastener's heavy rod[44].
The throneless ruler of the regnant race--
King, but no tyrant--prophet, priest, and seer,
Meets upon sacred summits, face to face
(As when to Moses drew Jehovah near),
The Infinite and Spirit Minister[45],
Meets Him as man meets man, and by His grace
The power is given, with seeric eye to peer,
Time's vista viewing through prophetic glass: 1720
Plain to his gaze revealed, the unborn ages pass.
War, slaughter, conquest; heroes, sages, famed;
Kingdoms, republics, empires, rise and fall;
Till pride unknown, and tyranny unnamed,
Where righteous rule brings blessedness to all.
Then self again, the universal thrall.
The faithful, dead or dwindled to a few,
Crime begets crimes the heavens to appall.
Now arrows of God's anger pierce them through,
And horrors piled on horrors make misery's retinue. 1730
All this and more the prophet-prince foresaw[46];
Messiah's self--Jehovah--Him beheld,--
The Perfect One, in whom was found no flaw,
Though slander as an ocean round Him swelled.
Life's deathless tree--deathless, though demon-felled;
The crash resounding to this far-off shore,
Whose winnowed remnant welcomed Him, revealed
In risen glory, when had ceased the roar
Of wrecking tempests, flung His radiant face before.
At Whose rebuke the haughty mountains bowed. 1740
Shorn by the whirlwind, sunk, or swept away,
No more their frown the lowly valleys cowed,
Rising like billows 'mid the wrathful fray,
And dashing 'gainst the skies their dusty spray.
Rocks, boulders, hills, no titan strength could lift,
Hurtle as pebbles in the storm-fiend's play.
Earth opes her jaws, and through the yawning rift
Cities, peoples, vanish; of hope, of life bereft.
Three hours of tempest, and three days of night;
Thick darkness, thunder-burst, and lightning flash; 1750
Millions engulfed, millions in prostrate plight,
Groveling as slaves that feel or fear the lash,
Mingling their groans and cries with grind and crash
Of crags the cyclone's catapult impels,
Whose shrieking flails the fields and forests thrash!
Wild o'er the land roused ocean's anger swells,
And flame's relentless tongue the final doom[47] foretells.
Three hours of stormful strife--then all is still,
Save for a voice the universe might hear,
Proclaiming what hath hapt as heaven's high will, 1760
Dispensing pardon and dispelling fear.
Anon a mightier marvel doth appear;
Uprolls the misty curtain of the sky--
The midday sun no more their minister,
Greater hath risen! and glories multiply,
As angels in their gaze earthward and heavenward fly.
He greets them as a shepherd greets his flock;
Shows them His wounded side, His hands, His feet;
Then builds His church upon the stricken Rock,
Where flow life's healing waters, limpid, sweet, 1770
As infant innocence[48], that joys to meet
Its great Original. With holy hand
He ministers, bids death and hell retreat,
And singles twelve from out the sainted band,
To sow with words of life the trembling, tear-worn land.
He bids them prize the truth from heaven outpoured--
What late His tongue hath told, and all that seers
Of earlier days, who owned Him as their Lord,
Have sounded in a world's unwilling ears;
That truth with truth may blend in after years, 1780
As rivers many to one ocean flow;
That when Messiah in his might appears,
Men all may see Him as he is, and know
The Majesty of Heaven, 'mid nations bending low.
He greets them as His "other sheep"[49]--a fold
Unknown to Judah, but to Jesus known;
And tells of others still, whose fate untold
Hath been the skeptic's scoff and stumbling stone.
All Israel must hear, and one alone
The shepherd be, to guide and govern all. 1790
Where'er, from torrid belt to icy zone,
They wander, they must heed the warning call,
And flee to Zion's shore ere crumbling Babel fall.
He numbers them with Joseph, known of old,
Whose flock the wolves shall tear in time to come;
Because a wasteful heir his portion sold,
A prodigal forsook the parent dome,
To riot in the wilderness and roam,
Feeding on husks: yet, turning at the last,
Redeemed from darkness, to the Father's home; 1800
And there, the hour of retribution past,
Forgiven, at His dear feet their weary souls they cast.
Anon He pictures Japheth's destiny[50]:
The Gentile prospering in the Promised Land,
The guardian of the ark of liberty,
So long as he for human right shall stand,
Nor trample on Jehovah's high command.
But woe to them of flinty heart and face
Who from Him turn, to smite with ruthless hand
The withered remnant of a star-ruled race! 1810
For Laman yet shall spring, a lion to the chase[51].
Vexing the vexer with a vengeance sore,
Who, false to highest hope of human need,
Shall tyrant turn, and play the part no more
Of nursing parent unto Joseph's seed,
For whom a nation founded was and freed,
That from its hand to his fierce house might flow
The promise of his fathers. God shall plead
With Japheth, till his pride shall melt like snow,
Swept from the mountain side, chased by the sun's red glow[52]. 1820
His word now builds the New Jerusalem--
(Earth-born, though basking in eternal rays)[53],
Which Japheth, blent with Jacob, joined with Shem,
Shall rear on Joseph's land in modern days.
The Father's work of wonder He portrays:--
A servant, marred[54], though hurt not, and yet healed,
Whom wisdom hearkens to, whom faith obeys;
Arm of the Lord, long lying unrevealed,
Uplifted and made bare, His flock to fold and shield.
Sounds then a parting note, a plaint of woe, 1830
'Gainst coming ages of iniquity,
Ere purifying floods o'er earth shall flow,
And man from sin and self delivered be.
Then, of the twelve, he sanctifieth three[55],
With power o'er death, and gives them to remain
Till comes He in His glory, Lo! they see
The opening heavens receive Him once again;
And marvels else behold, that mortal tongues must chain.
Three generations pass in righteousness;
A fourth begins, and still from strand to strand 1840
Peace rules, love reigns, and wealth and wisdom bless
The banded nations, walking hand in hand;
Christ's word supreme above a willing land,
Where rich and poor, common their goods, their gold,
Seeking God's glory, free and equal stand,
Loving each one his neighbor, as of old;
Forebeam of day divine[56], when night's dull mists have rolled.
That restful day shall dawn; but e'en as storm,
Darkness and devastation, judgments dire,
Changed with convulsive throe the land's first form, 1850
Made mountains plains, plains mountains, purged with fire
And flood this soil--as saw my nation's sire,
Ere light and peace looked down from realms above;--
So shall it be[57], and more, when heaven's hot ire,
Besoming a world's iniquity, shall move,
In burning, melting might, the gold, the dross, to prove.
Two centuries of love the land caress;
Buried the ancient feud, and banished vice;
When pride, to breed anew the old distress,
Crawls like a serpent to this paradise: 1860
Again the tempter's wiles the weak entice;
Again the fall, the sorrow and the shame;
Again, while angels weep, do fiends rejoice;
For now divided hearts, with hate aflame,
Belie with wicked deeds their righteous faith and fame.
Farewell to peace and power forever past!
Deepest in crime the once delightsome race,
Which melts as would the avalanche if cast
Into the furnace of the red sun's face[58].
Men vie in deeds that devils would debase; 1870
Southland 'gainst Northland strives with might insane;
Backward, still backward, bends the bloody chase[59];
Crimson the land with carnage; main to main
Surges a sea of slaughter--millions are the slain!
The white dissolves; the swart, the red, remains.
Night clothes the continents, and 'thwart the gloom
No ray descends on shadowed peaks or plains,
From history's sun. Darkness, a living doom,
Mantles mind, soul, making the land one tomb.
Then bursts the dawn--breaks forth the East in light, 1880
Where Japheth, cramped and straitened, cries for room.
Rent mystery's veil, naked, in savage plight,
Now occidental realms greet oriental sight[60]!
First found by him whose faith was mightiest,
And now by one whose patience[61] most excels.
Ere storm-pushed prow hath pierced the wordless West,
A kingly soul, unthroned, uncrowned, compels
The homage of a queen. His mind dispels
The gathered gloom of ages; mutineers
And malcontents his presence calms and quells. 1890
Past threatening reefs of bigotry he steers,
And builds a bridge of life that binds the hemispheres.
The Gentile comes, as destiny decrees,
To Zion's land[62], for freedom held in store,
And Israel's triumph. Friends of freedom, these,
Like to the pilgrim bands that long before
A refuge found upon this sheltering shore.
But followers of right oft wrong the right;
Oppressed become oppressors[63] in an hour;
And now, as day that pushes back the night, 1900
The strong the weak assail, enslave, and put to flight.
Nor yet can fate forsake them: Japheth's hand
'Gainst Jacob's wrath-doomed remnant still prevails.
Tyrants oppress him from the motherland[64];
The Lord of Hosts a champion arms and mails,
To quell whose might no human power avails;
Nor grander cause or chieftain e'er came forth.
Him as its sire the new-born nation hails,
And e'en would crown the man of matchless worth[65],
Did heaven vouchsafe such king to shame the kings 1910
of earth.
But thou hast heard: No king upon this land
From Japheth's loins. Yet shall there come a King,
And Japheth's host with Jacob's equal stand,
While bending nations to that Monarch bring
Their gold, their glory--friendship's offering.
What though invasion, anarchy, shall strive
To strangle right, to poison freedom's spring?
Naught that conspires 'gainst Zion's weal can thrive.
Jehovah--He shall reign, and righteous rule survive. 1920
Forerunner thou, and thy forerunners these,
Prophet of Ephraim, Joseph's namesake seer[66]!
More than those ancient bridgers of the seas,
Unveiler of the long hid hemisphere,
Whose mystery lies booked and buried here.
Mass thou the might of Joseph, yet to join
With Judah's might, Messiah's throne to rear;
That on this sacred shore may rise and shine
The City Pure-in-Heart--Kingdom of King divine.
Woe to the tongue that 'gainst thee shall contend! 1930
Break weapons all that smite this iron rod[67],
Beginning of the burden of the end--
The promised fulness of the word of God;
The voice of ages whispering from the sod.
That voice withstood, remaineth shut and sealed
The mightier things in mystery's abode,
Volume on volume slumbering unrevealed,
While wake these lesser truths till now from man concealed.
Speak thou to Laman's remnant, and reveal
The great things done, the greater yet to do, 1940
That bring deliverance unto Israel.
To white, to red, to men of every hue,
To all redeemed His mighty merit through,
Teach thou the way--tell how by Grace sublime
The spirit gardens[68] of the endless blue
Are visited, each vineyard in its time,
While glad sabbatic bells ring out their grateful chime.
Earth's hour is nigh--her blest millennial hour,
And dawn there shall a higher, holier day,
Prepared for by these principles of power, 1950
Divinest laws that loftiest worlds obey,
Where gods and angels honor them alway.
There greatest by humility are known,
There order reigns, and right doth all realms sway;
Like claiming like, and cleaving to its own,
Sovereign and subject sharing the glory of the Throne.
But earth's proud will must bend to will of heaven,
Or twain can ne'er be one, that one for all;--
By angel love the demon lust be driven,
And man set free from self's ignoble thrall. 1960
Let not the mighty task thy mind appall.
What God hath done shall He not do again?
A day of power shall batter down the wall;
The willing heart shall rend the hampering chain;
And o'er this ransomed world, first Son, then Sire, shall reign.
Proclaim the Dispensation of the End,
Era pre-destined, pre-ordained of yore,
When all of Christ's, on earth, in heaven, shall blend,
And build the Empire of the Evermore.
Ascendeth One who all things shall restore-- 1970
The dead to life, the dew-drop to its source.
Spirit must reign, the carnal rule no more;
And this lest earth, winging the sunward course,
Unmeet for such a change, melt 'neath consuming curse.
Smite thou that sin of self, which binds the world
In fetters fell, than all save truth more strong;
That sin most serpentine, round all men curled,
Within whose fatal fold earth writhes full long.
To loose the coil doth unto thee belong.
To free the soul from sordid tyranny, 1980
Be sacrifice the burden of thy song.
Ay, sacrifice shall set the prisoner free,
And men this truth shall learn, that light is liberty.
CANTO SEVEN
The Arcana Of The Infinite[1]
Flake upon flake, then slide succeeding slide,
The marvel and the wonder multiplied.
Garnered in one vast mind[2] the glacial store,
The glittering avalanche of heavenly lore,
Whose living streams shall slake the burning thirst
Of time unborn, of nations yet unnurst;
Torrent of truth, river of prophecy, 1990
Rolling through worlds to find fulfillment's sea.
He stands, as Moses on the mystic mount,
Where knowledge pours from wisdom's purest fount;
Stands 'neath the droppings of the crystal eaves,
Stands on the loftiest summit man achieves,
Where light eternal--was, is, and to be--
'Lumines the vistas of immensity,
The ultimates of human destiny.
He walks and talks with God, as friend with friend;
He reads the Book of Time from end to end, 2000
And in the Volume of Eternity
Peruses past and far futurity;
Ranges to realms of wider mystery--
Ne'er-ending hope, ne'er-ending history;
While from all depths that sink, all heights that soar,
Come voices, visions, of the Evermore.
Like unto like, above, beneath, the skies,
Deep calls to deep, and faith to faith replies.
He hears the solemn dispensations[3] chime,
From morn till eve, from birth to death, of time; 2010
He notes the markings of the horologe,
The set times of the great unerring Judge;
Then sees those dispensations as they run
Their 'lotted course, like hours 'twixt sun and sun.
Wave after wave rolls o'er the shining sand,
Wave after wave breaks higher up the strand,
With all of weal or woe the ages send.
As sundered ocean tides that shoreward tend,
Now past and future o'er the present pend,
Till on the narrow isthmus sea meets sea, 2020
And time no longer parts eternity.
He hears the soundings of the trumpets seven[4],
Whose angels, stooping from the heights of heaven,
Proclaim, in tones to rend the echoing spheres,
The secrets of the Seven Thousand Years;
The secret of a book with seven seals,
That all of mortal mystery reveals;
Man's course, God's chronicle, life's tale told true,
Nor tinged with favor's tint, with hatred's hue;
Earth's week of history, whose sabbath chime 2030
Summons to rest the weary soul of time.
The Holy Order[5] that for aye hath reigned,
For loyal faith and lofty deeds ordained;
The all-creating, all-controlling chain,
Whereby the Gods perpetuate their reign,
Whereby the higher, bending, lift the lower;
Wielding the sceptre of Almighty Power,
Ruling by right the nations, ill aware
Whence came the thrones that have been, thrones that
are; 2040
Which sets up one and puts another down,
Their fate proclaimed as fortune's smile or frown;
The power that reigns not save in righteousness,
Persuades in meekness, chastens but to bless;
The might of heaven, the pure and potent chain
Stainless, save mortal links their lustre stain,
And plunged through fire are purified again,
He sees extending through the storms of time,
Anchor and cable of a ship sublime.
Pilots of life on death's fierce tempest tossed, 2050
Love's legionaries, saviors of the lost;
A sacred army's solemn pride and boast,
The janissaries of the heavenly host;
The jeweled circlet of the Central Gem,
Jehovah's body-guard--the Gibborim.
The guileless followers of the guiltless Lamb,
Of Israel ere Earth knew Abraham[6];
Sealed in the forehead with the sacred Name,
Bearing the Ark of God, the Sword of Flame[7];
Behold them coming, coming, as they came 2060
Whene'er was kindled here the beacon blaze
By each Elias of the olden days!
Truth, error, shine and shadow[8], alternate,
As oft as mankind proves degenerate.
But ever, as the day-beam sinks and dies,
The stars reset their lanterns in the skies;
And unto Moses in the wilderness
Comes greater light, succeeded by the less[9].
Till truth the fulness of its ray restores,
And heaven o'er earth the holy unction pours, 2070
By ministers upon each hemisphere,[10]
Sent to proclaim what every soul must hear.
The promise past, fulfillment now is seen,
The Perfect Church[11], resplendent in the sheen
Of risen Righteousness, whose arm once more
Puts forth in power to rescue and restore.
Gray grows to crimson, crimson melts to gold,
And dawns the day by starry night foretold,
Whose lamps prophetic pale their silvery rays,
Lost in the golden light of Latter Days. 2080
A twofold Church, a dual Bride he sees;
Time's the full reflex of Eternity's.
Visioned the Dispensation of the End,
Where Zions meet, where dispensations blend,
And time's sad rivers cease their mighty moan
In sobbing requiem o'er his sunken throne,
Till death departs, and joy, from zone to zone,
Welcomes the rightful Heir unto his own.
Visioned the Council of the Ancient One[12],
Where stars make ready for the rising Sun; 2090
Where Adam yields the mortal world he won,
Unto the Sabbath Lord, till sabbath done,
And Sire receives the Kingdom from the Son.
Ere when, award of fulness is there none;
Though great ones gain the far celestial shore,
Shining and perfect as they shone before.